The cost of child-rearing rose 3% in 2015, the government says

Raising a Baby Just Got More Expensive

Married, middle-income parents in the U.S. will spend a whopping $233,610 to raise a child born in 2015 from infancy to adulthood. Here's how the numbers play out. Photo: Associated Press

It’s getting more expensive to raise children in America.

A new report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture found that married, middle-income parents will spend $233,610 to raise a child born in 2015 from infancy to adulthood. That estimate was as small as $174,690 for low-income families and as large as $372,210 for high earners.

The agency found the cost of child-rearing rose 3% from 2014 to 2015, a rate that’s above inflation but below the pace at which such costs have risen in a typical year since 1960. What’s changed over time is that child care and education represent a larger piece of the pie while the share that goes toward housing and feeding children is shrinking.

The estimates also factor in the cost of transportation, health care, clothes and other incidentals, but they don’t include biggies such as saving for college.

How much you’ll ultimately shell out varies greatly depending on where you live. Such expenses are highest in the urban Northeast, urban West, and urban South, and the lowest in the urban Midwest and rural areas, the USDA report found.

This hefty tab is among the reasons American women are having fewer babies. Last week the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the total fertility rate for 2015—a calculation that measures the number of births the average woman will have during her lifetime—was at its lowest level in almost three decades. Millennials, who make up the bulk of child-bearing women, are waiting longer to get married, a shift that’s damping everything from single-family-home purchases to baby-goods sales.

For parents who want the best value, the USDA report points out that the more children parents have, the more their per-child cost diminishes (think packing two kids into one bedroom, and hand-me-down bicycles). Compared with a two-child family, couples with one child spend 27% more on the only child while those with three or more kids shell out 24% less on each little one.

The graph shows that all but two of the cost factors have declined. Education and health care have run out of control and are likely to continue that trend unless we figure out how to break the protective guilds and introduce competition.

The last eight years have produced no challenge to the education guilds and has concentrated health care in quasi NGO's we used to call hospitals. The costs of both will continue to escalate as long as they are shielded from Competition and used as instruments of social policy and vote getting.

If you are responsible, live within your means, have only as many children you can afford to support, and send them to college in-state to learn something useful, maybe you can beat that number and still have something left for retirement.

Otherwise, have as many kids as you want, vote for Bernie or Liz or their ideological successors, and make those stupid frugal families pay.

Maybe the dependency exemption on form 1040 should equate to that number(233K) divided by 24 years and indexed for inflation to better match the cost of raising a child and their worth on a tax return.

My rescue rabbit from the shelter has always been a great companion. He doesn't cost me almost $20K a year, at least as long as he keeps his paws off the remote, ordering up pay-per-view when no one else is at home.

Nothing is free, the citizens of the US pay for those "assets on the other side of the federal government's balance sheet that cover the liabilities you mentioned..." with their taxes. Perhaps this is news to you???

I know young people who are contemplating having children. One thing that deters them is that bearing a child gives the government an 180-year window during which their family can be destroyed emotionally and financially.

The numbers above are too low if both husband and wife work without factoring in private school. Childcare will be a lot more than 35k just for the first 4 years. More like 75k. A good reason to make childcare cost deductible with say 30k max deductible. Private college and high school for higher income is definitely not a part of the numbers. In NYC, the cost with childcare and private schools is much over a $1mm.

While kids should not be spoiled with frivolous stuff, putting a number on kids is why the western civilization esp. in Europe is under threat. Couples do not reproduce because they want to keep their "lifestyle" spending money on themselves!

It is really $13K/yr for 18 years. It is not a huge number on an annual basis. That is why we go to work, right?

My wife and I have six children, born from 1985 to 1994. The last is a senior in college. All six paid their OWN way through college and graduated DEBT FREE. The UNC system here in North Carolina, some living at home some living away.

Four girls, two boys, two girls built tall and thin, two girls built short and medium. One boy tall and thin, one boy tall and stocky, built like a bull. So, some got hand-me-downs, some didn't.

Family income was upper middle class, my wife stayed home until going back to work when the youngest entered college.

We are well positioned for retirement, just did not WASTE money over the years.

"as large as $372,210 for high earners." This sounds like a major underestimate. The only really good K-12 private school in my area costs about $26K for kindergarten and $30K for high school, and that is not even one of the top 100 K-12 schools in the US. In other words, the $372,210 will barely cover a good private education for 13 years. That's still without books, uniforms, tennis coaches, etc.

Add in the other costs of living (travel, clothes, room, food, computers, etc.), and someone can easily hit $1 million per child.

@Kurt John@Chris Petruzzi I agree. We used to live in an area where the best option for schooling was only private. So we moved to a suburb in our same metro area with good public schools. It cut our costs tremendously and the kids like it better. However, we don't get invited to fancy parties or dinner night at celebrity in town bistros anymore as our city associates think we've fallen off the planet.